Where Do I Want To Live
Some jobs are more readily accessible while others can only be performed in certain locations. For example, you will probably need to live in a rural location if you choose to work as a park ranger or farmer, and you may want to live near an urban area if you plan to pursue a finance or fashion career. Plan carefully to ensure you can work where you want to live – and vice versa.
Choose Your Passion As Your Career Path
When you chose what youre passionate about, youre likely to succeed because you wont ever give up. You wont give up because your passion is a part of you, so giving up will be like giving up on your dream and your life.
So you wont be doing that, especially since choosing something that interests you means youll love doing it when going through rough patches. After all, rough patches are aplenty whatever career path you pick.
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Engage With Experienced Professionals At Least 5
Ask them to describe what they do, what they like, and what they dont like. After doing this with 5-7 people in different industries and functional areas, you should have a decent idea where the best path might lead.
All of that said, you will make mistakes along the way. Dont be afraid of that. Make them quickly, learn from them, and move on.
Believe it or not, I opened a fortune cookie over 15 years ago that is still taped to my computer monitor so I can read it every day: You dont have to know where you are going to be headed in the right direction.
If you are early in your career, guess what? You have NO IDEA where you are going! My advice to you is to keep heading in the right direction!
Ron Humes
Vice President of Operations Southeast Region, Post Modern Marketing
Every year, high school and college graduates are faced with their first real career dilemma. More than likely, it will not be their last. So, what is a person to do if they dont know what career path to choose?
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Try To Think Of What Motivates You Your Interests And Your Passions
Including the list below, add your own personal and career motivations, personal interests, and passions. Your key list of items should be things that drive and interest you. Here are some common motivations that drive a large number of individuals.
Create your list from scratch using the below items for ideas:
- Motivated by winning or success
- Motivated by power and fame
- Motivated by money or rewards
- Motivated by recognition
- Motivated by making an impact
- Motivated by health or fitness
- Motivated by growing things from scratch
- Motivated by learning and personal growth
- Motivated to just live a simple and easy life
Now consider adding your interests and passions. Such as art, travel, internet, music, socializing, dining, etc. All those things I just mentioned play a part in many careers.
Now that you compiled a list to help you determine whether a career will likely satisfy your wants and interests, you need to focus on career research. With the internet, there are a vast number of online resources and research methods to help match you with career ideas.
Seek Advice And Ask Questions
Talk to the people you trust in your life about how you are feeling about your career path. Whether it be your parents, careers advisor, friends or any mentors in your life, these people can be great sounding boards to help guide you to making the right decision.
Ask questions about their experiences and their careers. You may have someone in your life who works in a specific industry you have interest in. Talk to them and see if there is an avenue for you to do some volunteering or work placement with.
Other people shouldnt decide what career path is best for you but their guidance can be very helpful when the time comes for you to make the decision.
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S To Take If You’re Unsure Of Your Career Path
The Indeed Editorial Team comprises a diverse and talented team of writers, researchers and subject matter experts equipped with Indeed’s data and insights to deliver useful tips to help guide your career journey.
Determining your career path is an important first step in a successful career. Clearly identifying your path can help you focus your time and energy where it matters most. With a little effort, you can be well on your way to a rewarding profession. In this article, we explore tools and tips for discovering your best career path.
Start With The Basics And Back Off Your Focus
All too often, we get caught up in titles and specific occupations before we establish our basic parameters. Before we decide if we want to be an engineer, a lawyer, a nurse, a doctor, or a construction supervisor, we should answer some basic questions.
Do we like to work with the public, or do we prefer to work in private? Do we want to work with a certain age group of people? Do we like to work indoors, outdoors, or both? Do we like to work with our hands, with computers, with teams, etc.?
Before we try to narrow the thousands of careers down to one specific path, we need to determine the basics. It is not uncommon to find a working professional in an industry that does not satisfy them because the basic parameters of the occupation do not align with their tastes.
Once we determine our basic inclinations, we can begin to narrow our path.
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What You Need To Know
If you’re stuck in your career change, there are three main challenges or paradoxes that you’re going to come up against.
1. It’s you that wants to make a change, but it’s also you that’s your biggest obstacle
In the depths of my despair about my job, there were signals from all around me that I wasn’t in the right place: I was embarrassed to talk about my work with others at parties I couldn’t imagine doing my boss’s job and I was petrified that I’d reach 60 or 70 and not feel proud of the work I’d done in my life.
On a day-to-day basis, I just felt numb uninspired by the meaningless work I was doing, and seemingly stuck in a Groundhog-Day reality of waking up to the same story every morning.
Yet, at the same time, I had no idea what else I wanted to do and no idea where to start.
Looking back, I now realise something I didn’t at the time that I was blinkered in my view of the world of work. All I knew was the industry I was in. I had surface-level visibility of some other careers, but there were so many fields and roles that were completely off my radar screen.
I was also scared of taking a cut in salary, scared of what my family and friends would think, and scared of losing the status I’d worked so hard to achieve.
These weren’t obstacles in the outside world they were obstacles in me. It was me my lack of knowledge and my fears that was most holding me back.
Does this also hold true for you?
2. You can’t figure it out by figuring it out
Take A Personality Test
Personality tests can be helpful when you are unsure of your career path. Personality tests can help you identify strengths, weaknesses, your optimum working environment and preferred tasks. There are many personality tests available for free online. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Riso-Hudson Enneagram Type Indicator are two free personality tests that may provide a deeper understanding of both your personality and career path.
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Evaluate Your Past To Avoid A Dead End
To help you clarify your feelings about previous jobs, so you can look for similar or different characteristics in the future, answer the following questions about each place youve worked:
- What did I like most and least about the company?
- What did I like most and least about the industry culture?
- What did I like most and least about my boss?
- What did I like most and least about the people I worked with?
- What was the most challenging thing about working there?
- When was I the happiest or the proudest?
- What was my biggest accomplishment?
- What did I like most and least about my responsibilities?
Evaluating your past can also help you recall pivotal moments you might have overlooked that would have made it clear you werent happy with your work. If looking back starts to uncover negative patterns around a certain kind of job or career, thats a way to recognize that its time to move on.
You may very well be missing out on opportunities elsewhere that would be a much better fit with your needs and abilities. Analyzing your past is a key component to discovering the kinds of situations that will bring out your best work and happiest self.
When Changing Careers Isnt A Realistic Option
For many of us, career dreams are just that: dreams. The practical realities of paying the bills and putting food on the table and the kids through school mean that you have to spend 40 hours every week doing a job that you dont enjoy. Or maybe you have to juggle multiple jobs, as well as school or family commitments, just to get by in todays economy. The idea of making a career change may seem about as realistic as choosing to become a professional athlete or an astronaut.
Still, getting up every morning dreading the thought of going to work, then staring at the clock all day willing it to be time to leave can take a real toll on your health. It can leave you feeling agitated, irritable, disillusioned, helpless, and completely worn outeven when youre not at work. In fact, having a monotonous or unfulfilling job can leave you just as vulnerable to stress and burnout as having one that keeps you rushed off your feet, and it can be just as harmful to your overall mental health as being unemployed.
Try to find some value in your role. Even in some mundane jobs, you can often focus on how your position helps others, for example, or provides a much needed product or service. Focus on aspects of the job that you do enjoyeven if its just chatting with your coworkers at lunch. Changing your attitude towards your job can help you regain a sense of purpose and control.
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How Can I Gain New Career Skills
Utilize your current position. Look for on-the-job training or opportunities to work on projects that develop new skills. See if your employer will pay part of your tuition costs.
Identify resources in the community. Find out about programs in your community. Community colleges or libraries often offer low cost opportunities to strengthen skills such as computing, basic accounting, or business development. Local chambers of commerce, small business administrations, or state job development programs are also excellent resources.
Take classes. Some fields require specific education or skills, such as an additional degree or specific training. Dont automatically rule out more education as impossible. Many fields have accelerated programs if you already have some education, or you may be able to take night classes or complete part-time schooling so that you can continue to work. Some companies even offer tuition reimbursements if you stay at the company after you finish your education.
Volunteer or work as an intern. Some career skills can be acquired by volunteering or completing an internship. This has the added benefit of getting you in contact with people in your chosen field.
Tip : Consider Starting Your Own Business
If youre getting worn down by a long commute or a difficult boss, the thought of working for yourself can be very appealing. And even in a slower economy, its still possible to find your perfect niche. Depending on the specialty, some companies prefer to streamline their ranks and work with outside vendors. However, it is especially important to do your homework and understand the realities of business ownership before you jump in.
Make sure you are committed to and passionate about your business idea. You will be spending many long hours getting started, and it may take a while for your business to pay off.
Research is critical. Take some time to analyze your area of interest. Are you filling an unmet need? Especially if you are considering an online business, how likely is your area to be outsourced? What is your business plan, and who are your potential investors?
Expect limited or no earnings to start. Especially in the first few months, you are building your base and may have start-up costs that offset any initial profit. Make sure you have a plan on how to cope during this period.
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Being Unsure What You’re Interested In
Sometimes, people may be unsure about what type of jobs there are that would suit their abilities or unique talents. For people experiencing this uncertainty, the most important part of the career search is going to be taking a personality test to help determine which careers align with their attributes and qualities.
Related: Practical Tips for Job Seekers with Indeed
In this video, you’ll learn best practices for starting your job search, applying to the right roles and nailing the interview.
Seek Out People Who Already Have The Career Youre Interested In
Folks who have gone before you are the best resource. By chatting with them about what the career your eyeing entails, it helps you validate your assumptions about the role and create a better plan to move into space. For example, you may think that a party planner sounds fun, so you chat with a few event specialists.
You find out that they do about one event a month, and the rest of the time, they are buried in spreadsheets think budgets, timelines, etc. If spreadsheets make your skin crawl, then it may not be in the cards for you after all.
Therapist and Holistic Coach, Moving Stretch
Clients often ask me about this, as it is so pivotal to their sense of self and life purpose. I usually recommend that people narrow down what it is they are looking to have more of. This could be material, mental, emotional, spiritual, or other and there are no wrong answers, as long as it is real to them.
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How Competitive Is This Career Path
Choosing a competitive career path isn’t to be automatically shunned. Competitive by its very nature means there must be a rich reward for those who are successful in attaining the post and therefore it is a worthwhile pursuit. You must, however, weigh up the risk vs. reward. Are you prepared to accept rejection and failure countless times before you’re accepted? Are you prepared to jump through as many hoops as required to reach this goal, such as further education, gaining internships and real-world work experience, and often extensive application and interview processes? If the answer is yes, then you probably have what it takes!
Team Up With A Career Counselor
If you prefer a one-on-one approach, find a career counselor or coach to guide you in your search. A counselor can help you find careers that best match your skills and preferences. Career counselors can introduce you to professionals in your field and guide you to internship opportunities. Besides guidance on your career path, career counselors will help you write your resume and improve your interview skills.
Read more:How To Choose the Right Career Counselor
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Listen To Your Intuition
There are a million tests you can take that will spit out your strengths, your personality traits, the careers best suited for you. I dont buy it. I believe that the only way to find a career path that will fulfill you, that will feed your soul, that will nourish you is to listen to your intuition.
You know what you want to do, even if it wont come out in words. It might be hiding inside of you, but its in there, somewhere. Reconnect with the deepest parts of yourself. Meditate. Journal. Dream. Be honest with yourself.
If the how just happened, if you could trust the money piece would figure itself out, what would you choose? Even if you only have a hunch, follow it. Take baby steps towards it. Trust that by following that hunch, youre listening to your inner compass, and youre getting closer to your purpose.
The only career path worth choosing is that one.
Stormy Stevenson
Founder, The Work at Home Wonder
My career path was chosen for me at the age of 18. I became a registered nurse because that was the thing to do in our family. However, I ended up unhappy and burnt out. I wanted a new path to follow, but couldnt see spending another four years in college and repeating that whole process.
Instead, I choose a new career path based on my interests and what I liked to do. I knew I loved connecting with other women and helping them figure out the hard stuff in life.
I also found out that tons of businesses needed content creators.
Unsure About What Career Path Is For You
Wednesday 21st Sep 2022
I dont know what I want to do in my career?
Has that question ever crossed your mind? I bet it has, but thats okay! Figuring out the career path you want to take is not only difficult but so intimidating! Theres always that lingering thought of What if I make the wrong career choice? Is it easier to do what my friends are doing or what my family want me to do?.
Here are some tips to help figure out your options!
REFLECTING
Ask yourself these questions What are you good at? What do you enjoy doing? Is it creative writing or calculations? Alternatively, think about what interests you? Are you fascinated about TV production, technology or the marketing industry? It is important to think about your options and what ones you think are suitable for you. You might be good at something but not necessarily enjoy it, so remember consider different factors. If youre unsure then why not do a strengths test to help identify what careers could be suitable for you!
LEARN ABOUT THE INDUSTRY
If there is a specific industry that interests you then take it upon yourself to do some research. It will be very useful to learn more about the sector as it will give you an idea of the different career opportunities available and you might find something specific that catches your eye. Or alternatively, you might realise that the industry is not for you. There is so much information available online as well as resources that you can use to expand your knowledge!
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